“Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.”

“If you plunder from west to east you are great like Alexander. if you do the same from east to west you are a barbarian like Chengiz.”

“The only difference between the East and the West seems to be that you have ancestors and we are going to be ancestors.”

“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.”

“It was a palace, made entirely of gold, sitting on an island of silver snow at the very top of the world. East of the sun, and west of the moon.”

“He went to America, months ago!America!Yes - America. Is that east or west? West. People travel east, my boy - from the east you get wheat and cloth and every other good thing. What ever made our Hammad go west? Didn't anyone offer him directions? Didn't he ask anyone? ”